I asked Jade, what do you do all day when other kids are in school?

She answered, "Well, I... Someties I go to a friends house and play, or go on the back patio and play. I go for little walks near my area. I watch TV. Sometimes I use the computer while the TV is on. I like to jump around in circles sometimes. I think about my sister and I'll always love her. I watch some netflix movies and I... I spin around in circles on the chair and run around in circles on the floor. I like to watch my mom and dad do work and play with my best friend Zach. "

Do you only stay at home when other kids are at school? "No, not always. I go for drives when other kids are at school. Sometimes my friends help me when I need help, like, helping me build club houses or finding other things that we need to build other things. Like puppets, or anything else! Sometimes my mom stays we can't do it, and sometimes we'll have hard things to do. And also, there's a good ways for that. There's a thing that I've always wanted to do before. It's making Stellaluna, and if you don't make it big enough, you can't write it all. "

"I have a good time going on long walks with my mom and Dad. And when the long walks are over, I like to go outside and get some more exercise to stretch my legs from so much exercise. I play with my friends sometimes to get that exercise. "

I am always loving and caring, or trying that is. I give hugs and kisses and my dad squeezes me so much. We're always the best family in the world. "

"We're going to Michigan to visit my Grandma and Grandpa on Wednesday and we have the biggest family. I am going to play in the snow and in the hot tub and listen to my heart and think, "What should I do?" THere is a wedding that I'm going to go see. In the middle of the night, we'll be flying on the plane, and I'll go asleep, and Nova will too, and that will be the best! I'll go to a nice wedding of love and I'll be nice and cheerful. "

"I hope I'll be the best kid in the world.... Mom, will you play Monopoly with me?"

So there ya have it folks. Unschooling in the words of Jade, age 7.

I am experiencing such a profound sense of happiness having given myself premission to unschool, to just be present and have fun in the moment, with my kids. I'm playing games, writing more, going to the park, cooking, and just hanging out. It's great. Well, not 100% all great, all the time, but mostly great. There are of course still mornings where everyone feels crummy and cranky, you don't make it to the gym, you are broke, and the line at the pharmacy is an hour long. But we all have those days, right?

So Nova had a rather rough day. She woke up crabby, didn't want anyone touching her, and then cried because her tummy hurt and her head and throat (I suspect from crying) hurt. So she laid quietly in bed for about an hour with a cool rag over her eyes, and then was ok to get up and play a bit. We hung out around the house, and I did a load of laundry. Don't know what all else. Around two Nova AND Elliott took a nap! Jade and I played cards and cleaned the office a bit. After two hours E woke up, but Nova kept sleeping! Maybe after affects of the DTaP? Or from staying up way too late last night? She's out with Daddy now, out late again at 10+ pm, so who knows what she'll be like tomorrow. Hopefully she's asleep in the car. She got up at 4 or so, and we went outside to play a bit, after some fussiness. She clearly is not feeling well- a high need for mama time and snuggles and special attention.

I worry about her. Elliott gets a good amount of attention because he's the littlest. Jade because she's bigger, and can play more grown up games and demands more one-on-one attention. Nova is my middle child, and I think because of her age and temperament, sometimes gets the short end of the stick. I wrote in an e-mail today, "How can I make sure that I not only see her Shine, but let her know that I see it, and help others see it too?" I want to be able to really connect with her, and make sure she knows how much I love her and value her for Who She Is. So I'm thinking, "How can I connect with her? What activities can I do with her?" Answers that come to me... Snuggle her. Kisses and Hugs and Wrestling. Color together. Draw. Pull out the modeling clay or soft dough and make sculptures. Set up some water play with warm water and bubbles, and splash around with her. Buy some paint and paint with her. Invite her to help me with my cooking. Teach her how to help cut vegetables. Get down on her level and really interact with her. LISTEN and coach her when she and Jade are struggling. Don't wait until the screaming starts- BE THERE and play WITH them.

Three was tough with Jade. It was where (IMO) I began to struggle and give up on some of my parenting values. I want to change, I want things to improve, and I know it can be done.

I've been musing a bit about why I put Jade in school this fall, and how I feel about our experience with COIL last year. I have come to the conclusion that we just didn't FIT there, and I wish I had trusted my gut about it. I didn't feel good about it after my first information meeting, I didn't feel good about it after our first outing, I didn't feel good about it after our first meeting, and only slightly better about it after our second. Yet I continued with it the whole year! Jade didn't like meeting with our advisory teacher, I didn't like the way we had to report back. I felt frustrated and pressured. It was NOT worth the "free" classes, and we didn't get the level of social activity I hoped for. I feel now that our teacher focused too much on what needed improvement instead of recognizing Jade's amazing self for Who She Is. The objectives we worked on every 2-4 weeks were "open" in that we had several curriculums that we could pick from, but we didn't want to do a curriculum. We wanted an objective that we could work toward that was open ended, yet do whatever we wanted to fulfill that objective. Overall, the experience there sucked, and I wish we had never done it. I couldn't truly unschool, or grow to trust myself or my child because I "had" to rely on an "authority," and it just made a dynamic of power struggles and misery- the whole situation made me hate homeschooling. Our relationship would have been better had Jade been in school.

Okay, that kinda turned into a rant, but I feel better now! I'm happy to be doing what we're doing. Tonight we played Uno and Yahtzee. Fun times.

My day started with a nursling climbing all over me wanting some mama milk. Then laying in bed trying to avoid the inevitable while my kids played nearby. My lazing came to an abrupt end when Nova fell and started shrieking hysterically. She had broken a slate off the wooden crate that we store of wood blocks in- and fallen. At first I was afraid she had broken her leg because she "couldn't" get up. O-M-G. Turns out that she "only" had a puncture wound. We cleaned it and called the doctor's office. Managed to get appointments for both Nova and Elliott in an hour. I quickly jumped in the shower and got dressed- sans bra- and loaded up the car. We got there on time and waited a mere 15 minutes before being shown in. Elliott has an ear infection- still or again, I don't know which, and Nova's wound was minor, and not likely to be prone to infection. We did give her the second DTaP though, since we were there. She took it like a champ, with nary a wince.

After that, we ran up to the store to by shoe laces, then to Taco Bell for lunch, followed by the ice cream parlor before heading to the park. E fell asleep in the car, and took a half hour nap in the sling. We stayed for almost 5 hours! It was great. It began to get dark, and I finally herded the kids to the car. Changed a poopy diaper, and drove home- to find two sleeping kids in the back seat. Nova will have to eat something at some point before I go to bed, if I am lucky, E will sleep till 4 or 5 tomorrow! HAHAHAHAHA! (Yah, right, I know.)

Sleep in slightly from staying up too late. Play Solitare on the Computer with Jade. Go to the gym, work out for 45 minutes. Hang out for a little while chatting with other mamas. Come home after negotiating going to the coffehouse vs not. Put Elliott down for a nap, get a sandwich (girls had already eaten theirs), check the computer. Watch part of "The Gnome Mobile." Brainstorm with Jade about spending money vs saving. Bake Muffins with Jade, draw with Nova. Watch more movie with Jade and Nova. Play Slap Jack, attempt to play "I Doubt It," attempt to play "War." Elliott wakes up. Jade checks to see if her neighbor friend can play while Nova and I wrestle, dance, and tickle. Jade's friend can't play, so she goes in to watch "ZOOM." I sort the diapers and pack some away. Snuggle with Nova and exclaim, "Look at this baby I found! I wonder who lost her?!" She giggles hysterically, and tries to get away. Four o'clock now, which means... Time to leave for Adeventures in Singing at the music and arts school.

Love Darts are a new visitor to our home. I THINK I read about them in Playful Parenting. Jade "shot" me this weekend, and I exclaimed, "Oh no! You've shoot me with a love dart!" Then I proceeded to smoother her with kissses and hugs and squeezes. She LOVES it. She spent what seemed like a huge chuck of yesterday shooting me. I think it's great! Wonderful way for me to connect with her, and for her to make her needs for connection known.

So Jade and I were recently brainstorming what I SHOULD do when I feel like I'm going to blow my top. One of her suggestions is to use a code phrase "Breathe deeply, drink slowly," and she would get me a drink of water if I needed one. So today, my highly sensitive self was starting to stress out and I was on the verge of losing it witht he kids. So I took a deep breathe and asked Jade to get me a drink of water! She took one look at me and said, "sure!" Then when she came back, she urged me to take slow deep breathes. I felt much better, and was able to calmly state what I needed and why, without theatrics or hysteria.

We've all been having a very nice week. The girls are happy with their toys, and have been having lots of fun. I've been playing LOTS of Monopoly with Jade. She loves that game! It's practically the first thing she thinks of when she wakes up in the morning.

I suppose I'm in an interesting place right now, re-evaluating my parenting and way of life, my values and ideals. I want to do what I can to help my children shine- I'm seeing that I need to help set them up for sucess right now. In that vein, I took Jade's loft bed out of the kids room and moved it into the front room, setting it up as a canopy bed/ couch. The kids seem pleased with it- it's like a permanent fort and climbing structure in the living room!

We're working on rearranging (and cleaning) the kids room to make it more user friendly. It will be interesting to see where that goes, and how it takes us.

Something interesting that I'm turning around and around in my mind is the issue of trust... It seems to me that one of the cornerstones of radical unschooling is the belief that children WILL learn what they need to know if supported with appropriate resources, love, attention, etc. What I am wondering is, how far does that go? For many people, it stops around the time their babies start walking. Others around the time their kids turn two or three. Most people have stopped believing their kids will learn what they need to know by the time the kids turn 5 or 6- the belief is that the kids NEED a teacher to MAKE them learn. Children want to learn, they just want to do it in ways other than boring rote and drill. (They want to learn in their own way, through play and practical applications.)

Then there are the truly radical. There are people out there who believe that EVERYTHING the kids need to learn can be learned without coersion or control... Even what, when and how much food their kids eat, when they go to sleep and wake up, etc. I have trouble with some of this. Like, if I gave my kids free rein on what they eat... I have visions of them eating only junk food, candy and sweets, highly processed carbs, etc. Maybe because I feel like I have no self control, and I'm worried that the kids would ruin their health and build bad habits for life, I can't imagine trying that.

We've had a busy and happy week, very relaxed and laid back. Christmas eve day Nick took the girls while I wrapped gifts that I had bought that morning. Christmas day we opened stockings, santa gifts, and the girls exchanged gifts. Then we opened the rest of our gifts after noon. The girls loved everything they got, and we've been having so much fun playing with them since. Magnetix, dress-up, coloring, mandala design....

I'm finished reading some e-mail, and have been sitting with the girls eating cookies and chicken vegetable soup. Jade just showed me her web page entry. She's so pleased and excited with herself. I am greatly enjoying her invented spelling. Now we're watching the Disney Movie Spirit, and I am reflecting on the joy of just letting my children BE. How precious to allow them to simply BE the wonderful, shiny, light filled creatures they are! Somewhere along the way, I lost sight of my original vision, my hopes to treat my children respectfully and with love. I started to feel like I needed to control and mold them INTO something, when they are PEOPLE already. Yes, they have less life experience than an adult, and will acquire wisdome and impulse control over time. But they are people already. They have their own interests, hopes, needs, desires, and dreams. I want to honor the people that they are already, and find ways to honor myself and the rest of our family at the same time. I know this may be hard. It may take a paradigm shift. I am re-affirming my commitment to positive parenting and discipline and I know I can change to become a better person.

There is a "educational philosophy" called Taking Children Seriously (TCS). When I first heard about it, I thought, what's not to agree with? I thinking taking children seriously is a good idea. I read a bit more and thought, "huh." There's lots of talk about finding common preferences on the TCS lists. In my brief reading on the TCS site and lists, I thought, "NO WAY." At a casual glance, it seemed like a lot of VERY permissive parenting, and sacrificing your needs and desires to your child's whims. NOTHING I was even remotely interested in. Especially considering the fact that a lot of the "solutions" to problems posed seemed to cross into the absurd, and I couldn't see how it could possibly work in a family with more than one child. Sometimes, it seemed to me, there just IS no common preference. Compromise, maybe, but sometimes even comprimise seems unattainable.

I can't really see myself being completely in line with TCS philosophy. But upon reevaluation of my hopes and values, I think it's worth a second look. The idea of finding win-win solutions for everyone, and working to find common preferences as muchof the time as I can, it seems like a good one. One worth considering.

I have 3 three young children. I have commitments, I have my own plans, and goals. I will always be striving to find balance in meeting all our needs. But balance is a goal worth striving for. And I am COMMITED to that striving.

Elliott has been asleep for a little over an hour. I've eating my lunch and spent some time writing here. Now it's time for me to check the weather and do some housework. If it doesn't rain, then when E wakes up, we'll all go to the park for a while. At 5:30, we'll head to Nick's work and perhaps go see a violin recital by one of his co-workers. We'll have dinner, and at 7:00 or 7:30, we'll come home and settle in for the night. Maybe read a few stories, brish our teeth, and just try to relax.

I was supposed to get a night out at a friends to exchange cookies with some other hsing mamas tonight. Unfortunately, my husband is MIA. Also unfortunately, I now have to clean my kitchen. On the up side, the kids and I are greatly enjoying the gingerbread cookies we cut out and baked, as well as the cocoa oatmeal balls we made. Yum, yum. Lets see, that's math, science, and language arts, plus, of course, practical life skills. Everyone needs to know how to bake cookies! :-)

I'm feeling happy and calm, for the most part. I spent some time last night writing an e-mail to a friend about the ups and downs of public school versus homeschooling. I though I might edit it to share it here.

The Ups and Downs...

I feel that we got really lucky with Jade's teacher and class. One positive: It was K/1 mixed, so for almost 2 hrs, 4 days a week, there were only 10 students in the class. (Kinders didn't come in until 10:20.) She had a very good experience. (This is aka a lower student-teacher ratio.)

Another positive: plenty of differentiation and lots of "open" work. For example, they did writers workshops with the open prompt to "Draw something that really happened and write about it." For math, they worked on roughly one number a week, and used lots of manipulatives to really understand that number- the different ways to express it, see it, and so on. They did stations, and after about 6 weeks of school, there would be different stations for different groups of people. So this past week, some kids would "write words that rhyme with cat" and others would "work with Ms B on syllables."

One downside-
I feel a lot of the work was just review, and Jade could have been challenged more. She was having fun, but it was primarily review rather than new material. It limited her natural capacity (simply by limiting free time) to learn on her own.

Another issue was after school meltdowns. When she got home, she often had melt downs from being overly tired, hungry, or just plan stressed. Several times she got upset because we had gone and done something without her- gone out to eat, to the store, whatever. She was not pacified by the fact that *she* had gotten to eat hot lunch at school, and played with her friends at recess. Being sure she had down time to decompress, and a snack right away helped, but didn't completely help. Even first grade is stressful for sensitive kids!

There there was the schedule- both a good and a bad thing. The schedule was kind of a pain in the butt for me- we hadn't been doing classes, so our days went from practically schedule free to uber scheduled- I HAD to be up by 7:30 at the lastest, if I wanted to work out, I HAD to be at the gym before 11, I HAD to be home by 12:30 because Elliott needed an hour and a half nap minimum. I HAD to get him up at 2:25 to pick her up from school, except Thursdays, in which case, I had to keep him up until after 12:35 or so... Etc, etc.

The routine WAS good for Jade though- she has learned to get up, get dressed, and feed herself in the mornings, mostly without my getting on her case. I intend to try and keep up the morning routine, and go work out earlier so that our late mornings and afternoons are more flexible.

One thing that really surprised me was that although the amount of time Jade and Nova spent together decreased pretty significantly, the amount of time they spent fighting did not- only the amount of time they spent playing together. So the fighting tended to be more intense, and crammed into 4 or 5 hours, instead of 10 or 12.

Other things...

Jade would be "indecisive" during choice time. So for 1/2 hr, she would spend almost half of it trying to decide what to do. Ms B felt it was a "major goal" to help Jade be able to make decisions more easily. I don't know why this bothered me, but it did.

There was also an interesting dynamic that I noticed developing over the course of the semester too. Definitely an almost-cliquishness, very hard to describe. I've seen it a little bit at homeschool groups too, but not nearly to this degree. And a big difference is that there is very little playground supervision, so there isn't that kind of immediately available coaching that kids have at home or at the park.

Really, this seems long, but these issues felt minor in the moment. It was a good experience, and I think that she would have continued to do well. Jade's teacher was wonderful, and I feel there were a lot of things she was doing "right." Jade was happy, had friends, and was content to do the work being presented to her. She adjusted to "always sitting on the carpet and having to LEARN things," but when it came right down to it, we would both rather just be together, playing and having fun. I think now that I've let go of my expectations that we "do school," we will all be much happier- neither of us every really wanted to do school at home AT ALL, we just tried it because we felt we had to.

A peek into this mama's madness and the why's of giving up on public school, in spite of an overall good experience.

Of course Jade and I are both having mixed feelings about withdrawing her from school to homeschool again. So last night, I asked her if she was feeling a little sad about not going to school anymore. (This was after she said she didn't want to go to school today and I encouraged her to go anyway, so she could say goodbye to her friends this week.) She said, "No." Paused. "I'm a large sad. I'm going to miss my friends. Especially Angel." We talked more, and cuddled as she went to sleep.

I felt sad and conflicted. I KNOW she is going to thrive at home, and I believe it will be best for our family in the long run. But I also know that it might be bumpy for a while, and the kids may have some negative feelings as we re-adjust. I feel sad that she was sad.

Still, I asked her this morning if we should let Ms. B know that Friday would be her last day, and she said yes. I let the principle know that she would not be returning after the break due to "personal family reasons." She gently encouraged school as a way of keeping routine in Jade's life, but was sweet and supportive, and let me know that she would be welcome back, either into Ms. B's class or the PACT program. I did not elaborate that I expected to make a long term commitment to homeschooling, but that it was unclear what would be happening with our "personal family reasons" for pulling Jade.

I feel slightly dishonest, though I haven't lied. I do feel slightly sad at pulling her because this school has been so wonderful for us. The whole staff is great, and they have a genuinely good program in Jade's class. But it's still *school,* and there's so much more.

In a fear and anxiety induced panic, I enrolled Jade in school in August. She had a good experience, and a really great teacher. But deep down, I felt like I was giving her an inferior experience and education. People told me to give it a chance, I could change my mind and bring her home any time. The unspoken sentiment was, of course, that I could only bring her home if there was *something wrong.* Which, in a way, meant that I didn't really have a choice.

I will do what is best for my child. Deep down, I believe that what is best for my child and for our family is unschooling. Yes, we had a good experience at school, yes, my child's teacher was/ is fabulous. Yes, my child was growing, learning, and content. But there is more for her to live and do. "Good Enough" does not meet my standards.

Friday will be Jade's last day at school. I have filed my R4/PSA. I have written a formal letter which will be mailed to the registrar today or tomorrow. I feel so peaceful- something I never really felt while Jade was in school.

We have an enrollment of one elementary school student, one preschool student, and a toddler. Our primary activity: Play.

Jade and I brainstormed our plan yesterday. This is what we want to do:

• A PE class with parachutes and balls
• Cooking
• Art
• Dance, Gymnastics, or Yoga maybe?
• Music
• Park Days
• Camping Trips
• Library Trips
• Scrapbooking?
• Quiet Reading Time and
• Choice Time which includes:
• Fire Department
• Computer Lab
• Dress Up
• Craft Box
• Legos/ Blocks
• Quiet Reading
• Drawing
• Play Dough
• Writing (stories, letters, and so on)